This cemetery is located in Nelson County, Kentucky.
It was re-discovered (for my family) by Richard T. Bealmear (my uncle), the
family historian. My father, Donald A. Bealmear, and his brother Richard
first explored the cemetery in the spring of 2001. My son Ted and I (with
Richard) were shown the cemetery in July of 2002. It was that evening that the
first "inkling" of a recovery project was born.

As you can see, the cemetery was in terrible shape -- badly
overgrown with briars, brush and trees. We have obtained permission from the
current owners of the farmland the cemetery rests on to start a recovery
project.

The cemetery is 60' x 40', and is surrounded by
a waist-high stone wall with no gate. Records indicate that there are 18 graves
(maybe more), including Samuel and Priscilla Bealmear, who were my
great-great-great-great-grandparents. The first burial in the cemetery was
in 1824,
the last in 1891.

These images of the cemetery (with exception of the headstone pictures)
were taken on February 15, 2003. The headstone pics were taken last July.

Click on the images to see them larger.

Kathy in front of the west side wall. Note the subsidence.

The leaning tree is going to take out Priscilla's headstone if it
falls.

A Summers monument.

Priscilla Bealmear's headstone

Samuel Bealmear's headstone

The Samuel Bealmear House.
(Not far from the cemetery)

The recovery project began April 19, 2003. What have
we gotten ourselves into?!

Six of us started work on the cemetery at about 9:30 that
morning. We worked cleaning, clearing, chopping, sawing, and pruning, until
about 4:00 when we were out of energy. These pictures don't do justice to
the appearance of the cemetery before we began that morning. I had
intended to take some pictures before we started to be able to better show what
it looked like. However, pulling up and seeing just what a huge task we
had before us had me a bit overwhelmed, and I didn't start to take pictures
until we had been working for a couple of hours. The first pictures give you an
idea of how thick it was. It did feel like a jungle at first!

I was truly amazed at how much the six of us were able to get
accomplished! We did much more than I thought we might the first
day. We worked our butts off! Aside from a couple a large
downed trees, and the large cherry tree that still threatens Priscilla's
headstone (we felt we were not up to the task of safely tackling that one), the
cemetery is clear. Many thanks to all! To my wife Kathy for her hard work,
support (and cookies!), to my Dad for his hard efforts, to my mom for her hard
work and providing us with a wonderful lunch, to my son Ted for his great help
and attitude (it's good to have a kid who's part workhorse!) and especially to
Nancy, who worked as hard if not harder than all of us, and still had a 3- hour
drive back to Catlettsburg, KY that evening.

Special care was taken to disturb as little as possible the markers
there. There is still a lot to do! The next steps will be to identify and
map the graves there, pursue proper removal of the large cherry tree (I hate to
see it come down, but it is not in good condition, and we feel it may come down
on its own, soon), and replacing many of the wall stones which are down.

We would also like to thank the Catlett family for granting us permission
to begin. They have been extremely accommodating; they seem to genuinely
understand what this means to the Bealmear family, and are willing to help where
they can.

To be continued..........

If you have any comments, suggestions or questions, please
contact Mike.